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William Saunders: Welcome, everybody, to a podcast of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports. I’m William Saunders, director of the Center for Human Rights at Catholic University. And joining me today are Cynthia Sun and Mark Yang for the Falun Dafa Information Center. Regular listeners to our podcast and viewers of our podcast will remember that they have been our guests before, and I enjoyed talking with them so much last time, I decided I would have them come back and you guys could, you listeners could learn some more from them.
So Mark and Cynthia, welcome.
Mark Yang: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here again. And we, too, also enjoy this podcast very much.
Cynthia Sun: Yeah. And this is my first time joining the podcast from DC. I’m at Georgetown now, so I’m really looking forward to this.
W: Yeah, let’s talk about that a little bit. So where were you last time, and why are you in DC now?
C: I was in New York, so our office, the main office, is in New York. And I’m starting my master’s in foreign service now, so I’m at Georgetown at the Walsh School now. So I moved here, the semester started in August, and so, [I’m] starting the two-year program off strong.
W: So do you still have time to do your advocacy work?
C: I mean, I’m trying. I think, we’re filming this in the month of September, so Xi Jinping is visiting next week. So both of us are going to go and appeal. Hopefully, we get to see him either go into his car or, you know, who knows what. But we’re looking forward to it.
W: Well, the Center for Human Rights and Chen Guangcheng, the Barefoot Lawyer for whom this is named, will be participating in some events around his visit. Why are you concerned? What are you concerned about? What should an American who hears this, because most of our listeners will be US citizens, what should they be thinking about? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
C: I think it depends on the attitude of the White House going into the meeting. Right now, the two of us are organizing an event at the Museum of the Bible. And more broadly, we’re trying to tell the White House, tell NSC and other agencies that a China that disregards human rights and indeed tramples on it is not a China worth dealing with.
And this is more broadly in terms of economic, military, or even in the international order. China is not a trusted partner.
W: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, you know, the center – our center – and Guangcheng talks about is, and hopefully all the listeners are already very aware of this, but for those who aren’t, the CCP represses human rights in China and abroad, and that’s what we mean by this transnational repression.
And these actions that are going on are aimed at US citizens or legal immigrants or visitors to the United States. But the point is, as we’ve said many times, they’re taking actions which undermine democracy and freedom in America. And so with the chairman coming next week, first of all, I’d like you to tell us about the events you’re gonna be involved in. But second of all, I would think anybody listening, you would want them to put pressure on the White House and the State Department to bring very clearly to the chairman in this meeting and in subsequent meetings that these kind of activities, which undermine freedoms of American citizens and its guests, are repellent and that we can’t be friends with a country who would do such things.
C: I totally agree. I think we have been blindsided even since the WTO signing that included China 20 years ago. Since then, I think the American policy and the attitude towards China has been a bit too optimistic and maybe even a bit naive in some sense. So I think Trump 2.0 really needs to set the record straight in terms of, millions have died under the Chinese Communist Party. There are 100 million persecuted for Falun Gong, millions persecuted for Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong.
This is a country that can even kill its own citizens if they believe in God. So imagine the attitude they have towards Americans who, like, our entire Constitution, is enshrined under God. That’s our entire culture. That’s like the bedrock of our foundation. So if that’s the attitude that they have, and they’re not willing to change the communist ideology, then we have to be powerful, and we have to show China that we’re not willing to step back, like, this is a red line.
Religious freedom is a red line for us, that we have to put up front and center. And then after that, we can start discussing other aspects because everything ties back into religious freedom and back to our founding principles.
W: Yeah. The actions of the Communist Party, Chinese Communist Party in the US undermines Americans’ citizens’ rights, and the foundational institutions of a democracy. So even people who say, “Well, I only care about America,” they should be worried because if the CCP continues to do what you were talking about against people in the United States, that just illustrates that they can’t be ignored. There are no borders for them. They’re trying to undermine democracy and human rights everywhere, including here in the US.
So I would think that the president, that has to be a big part of his agenda.
C: Yeah. You mentioned the events earlier. We’re holding one tomorrow at the Museum of the Bible. [The] International Religious Freedom Summit and the Religious Freedom Institute together are co-hosting, and we’re going to have multiple speakers from different faiths.
Ezra Jin is going to be there, as well as… he’s a pastor from China that got rescued July 4th, I believe. I believe on Independence Day he was rescued out of prison and flown back to America to be reunited with his family. But he was heavily persecuted for owning Bibles, for preaching the word of God. Like, it was, it was very severe.
And we also have a Falun Gong practitioner who survived forced labor. He made Spider-Man toys and Christmas lights in forced labor, and he was a class president at Tsinghua University.
M: Prestigious university.
C: Yeah, it’s like China’s Harvard, essentially.. And he was on his way to get his doctorate, but his school expelled him, and he was placed into [a] labor camp instead because of his faith in Falun Gong. And he survived, and thankfully, he’s in America. And he’s an engineer now.
But I think the potency of these stories really brings it to the American line of sight, where you see these people. He’s going to bring his Spider-Man toy up tomorrow that he, like, made, and it’s just like, how can Chairman Xi look at these people and say, like, “I did the right thing”? Does he have no guilty conscience?
M: Yeah, and also in the American dimension, this is clearly showing that how much the CCP is doing is really affecting us right here, right? You’re seeing the things produced in forced labor are on American shelves, right?
And also, there is this report by Graphika. It’s a network analysis company that really show that [the] CCP is constantly pushing out pro-Beijing propaganda narratives by a large network of what they’re trying to pose as mainstream American media. They’re trying to pose as the New York Times. They’re trying to pose as the Washington Post, and they’re constantly pushing these narratives while having them boosted by bots on social media. So they’re clearly trying to influence the narratives in the United States, trying to influence people’s ideas, and we’re unwittingly buying some of these products that are made in forced labor at the same time.
So all of these are extremely concerning, and also that have to make us rethink about how we are dealing with trade, right, in terms with China. Because how these products are coming in, how they are being sourced, they’re all kind of problematic in some ways.
C: How are they so cheap?
M: Yes. Exactly.
C: I wonder.
W: Yeah, that’s been the problem with those goods all along, is that they’re cheap because they use prison labor or forced labor or whatever. They don’t pay anybody. Okay. Well, look, thanks a lot. Really glad to have you guys on again, and hopefully I will run into you over the next couple of weeks as we raise our voices for human rights in light of this visit by Chairman Xi to the USA.
C: Thank you so much.
M: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.
C: We appreciate it, Professor Saunders.
W: Glad to have you. So anybody listening, remember, you can go to our webpage, humanrights.catholic.edu, and you can sign up for these podcasts, The Barefoot Lawyer Reports, and we’ll see you here next time.
Coming soon, a new documentary follows Chen Guangcheng as he travels to California to meet artist Chen Weiming at Liberty Sculpture Park, where powerful works of art confront the reality of human rights abuses under the Chinese Communist Party. Through their encounter, the film highlights the cost of speaking truth under authoritarianism and the enduring role of art and witness in the fight for freedom. Stay tuned for its release, coming soon.